


Concerning the smell

by withered



Series: Who's been lovin' you good? [60]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Caretaking, Character Study, First Aid, Injury, M/M, Memories, Not Steve Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25334986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withered/pseuds/withered
Summary: According to several studies, memories with a strong association to smell are easier to recall.Steve is hopeful.James is. Not.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Series: Who's been lovin' you good? [60]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/918138
Comments: 128
Kudos: 1442





	Concerning the smell

It starts because of an article on the internet. But no, that’s not quite right.

It actually starts with Steve – and what Steve wants – which isn’t James. A pity, really, for all Steve’s done on behalf of a man who doesn’t exist anymore. 

Not that Steve’s accepted that loss with any kind of grace.

Hence, the article.

Like many of Steve’s other attempts to “help” James, this article regards memories; more specifically, the recollection of them. According to several studies, memories with a strong association to smell are easier to recall.

This results in Steve insistently putting things beneath James’ nose and demanding he “take it in, really let it…work” which had been both weird and incredibly annoying since, thanks to the serum, his scent of smell had been heightened well above the average person’s.

Steve is hopeful.

James is. Not.

Not when his reaction is limited to passing judgment on whether he likes the scent or not.

Steve is consistently disappointed, but James isn’t surprised.

He’s come to accept that Hydra had succeeded in turning him into a ghost story – Bucky had been the cautionary tale and the Soldier, their bogeyman, and as a result, James Barnes is haunted enough by the past that he feels no reason to revisit it.

Who needs the imperfection of memory when he has the tombstones Hydra had dug up in his flesh, appearing in white incisions on marble skin, like the final score of what it took to create the Winter Soldier?

Sometimes, James thinks he can hear the ghosts of them – the scientists, the handlers – in their caskets beneath his skin trying to claw their way out, scratching their nails to the quick on the underside of the tally mark scars they’ve left behind.

Steve is a version of them from the other side, picking at the keloids of their joint past: The marks on James’ knees from when he’d first been learning how to ride a bike, and Steve had been cheering on the side-lines. The burn that hadn’t healed right from when the apartment his family lived in went up in flames, aggravating Steve’s asthma when he’d lived next door and got a lungful of smoke. The bad stitch job on his arm he’d had to get after a fight in the schoolyard because Steve never knew when to back down and Bucky couldn’t just let him fight alone.

James remembers these things in an abstract sense, a phantom recollection of his sisters’ delighted shouts, his pop’s smoky coughs, his ma’s soothing hums. He doesn’t remember their faces, just like he doesn’t remember any of the scientists or the handlers. 

In that way, James’ body is a graveyard of memories that are both his, and not.

He doesn’t tell Steve that though.

Just like he doesn’t tell Steve about the other scars that the serum didn’t wipe away, the wounds Bucky remembers with startling clarity: the bullet that grazed the outside of his ribs from his first assignment after basic training, the slight indentation on the back of his skull from where he’d banged his head against Hydra’s operating table the first time they’d taken him, the scar across his back from when he’d fallen.

Because Bucky had been just a boy and the Soldier had been a weapon, and James, the aftermath; a monument of the violence wrought on them both, and Steve doesn’t understand.

Steve wants his friend back, but the war broke Bucky and the Soldier buried him and James is all that’s remained.

Even if James could remember what it was like to be Bucky, Bucky isn’t who he is, and the last thing James wants to do after being free from Hydra is to be something else – some _one_ else – he isn’t.

James simply tells Steve that he doesn’t remember because it’s easier, because it’s believable, and because to some extent, it’s true.

It’s not enough, not for Steve.

James sits through every attempt Steve makes to “jog” his memory with something akin to resignation, something almost resembling bitterness.

It’d be a different story if Steve had been just trying to know who James is now, but that’s not what Steve wants.

Steve wants Bucky, and his method of getting him is to push James into the neat little boxes Steve remembers Bucky fitting. Steve answers every question on _Bucky’s_ behalf, and treats Bucky’s scars as an extension of his own history etched immemorial into James’ skin.

James learns to be okay with that.

Taking the path of least resistance is the only viable course of action when he’s so ill-suited to this new world.

Bucharest was. A life. He was running, and he was surviving, and he’d been afraid – of getting caught – of being brought back – of Hydra, and all the other organizations like them. But here, in the Compound: he has food and clothes and a place to lay his head where he doesn’t worry about getting shot in his sleep or taken in a moment of vulnerability. Here, he has a purpose to prepare for the Titan, to use the violence he that has forged his bones for something good, and James wants nothing more than to do that – have one good thing, _be_ one good thing.

He’s finally getting to choose, and if that choice means he has to let Steve take what little of the past James has, so be it.

Steve’s memories are far more recent, more meaningful to him anyway, and James-James can’t blame him for wanting to hold onto it.

But then, Steve discovers the scar on James’ back, and he lays claim to that too, retelling it like a war story of his own like he does with all the other scars that are Bucky’s and James’ and _not Steve’s_.

And James-James tries to let him have it, like he’s let Steve have all the others, _but._

“Christ, isn’t it bad enough that I agreed to ‘Meatless Mondays’?” Tony tsks, because of all the times James could’ve snapped, it had to be at the mandatory weekly dinners for every Avenger present in the Compound.

Peter, the poor kid, looks like he’s going to throw up, and it doesn’t help when James drops the glass he’d crushed in his hand onto the table; trying to brush off the broken bits embedded into his palm. The crunching noises aren’t pleasant.

“Alright, out,” Tony says, getting up and prompting James out of his seat, swiping the broken glass off the table with one hand while leading James away with his other, all the while telling the rest of them, “Vision used every bit of his artificial intelligence on this vegan spread, and _you will eat it._ ”

Steve protests as he always does whenever Tony is involved, but Tony, as is his wont, ignores him, and continues to hustle James out.

James thinks Tony will just leave him outside.

That would be par the course, really, given their more recent history.

While they’d had a rough second – third? – first impression after James’ arrival from Wakanda overlaid with awkwardness, Tony had blown through it hurriedly to welcome him, let him know there wasn’t any hard feelings on his end, and that if they could keep things professional that would be _super_.

Now, Tony’s leading him into one of the bathrooms, and absently waving him toward the toilet as he throws away the broken glass and grabs the first aid kit attached to the wall.

It’s an unnecessary precaution.

The little cuts have already healed. There’s barely a scratch left.

“You want the good stuff?” Tony asks. “Because you look like you need it.”

“I’m fine,” he says, the words scraped from what sounds like bone. James doesn’t talk much, if it all. He has no need to when Steve prefers to do all the talking himself. His fists tighten reflexively, and his exhale is sharp.

The wounds have healed, but the glass inside digs in.

“Yeah, no.” Tony taps at his curled fingers, and James twitches with the contact, his gaze flickering up to Tony’s, who’s closer than James has probably ever been to him since the bunker. James wants to recoil out of embarrassment or out of fear of getting a bad reaction but.

Tony’s eyes are golden, and he smells like cologne and caffeine and. Gunpowder.

It’s a scent persistent in the Soldier’s memories, indicative of his purpose, the reason for his existence. It’s in Bucky’s recollections too, present in the phantom weight of a gun that isn’t in his hand, in a twitch of his trigger finger.

With the faint smell clinging to Tony’s skin, James expects to get the phantom sense of being out in war zone – he expects to hear gunfire.

But he doesn’t.

The gunpowder just feels. Familiar. And it’s awful that James feels so grounded by it. Like he’s been living with the world turned up on its loudest setting, and now that he’s got some gunpowder diffusing in his lungs, it’s gone quiet.

It shouldn’t feel good that James is comforted by the smell because he doesn’t want to be what the Soldier was, and what Bucky was forced to be.

Despite himself and the logic in his head that says _its wrong_ ; he relaxes, calms.

He’s well aware that its twisted. It shouldn’t surprise him how fucked up he is, but still manages to surprise even himself, though he doesn’t have much time to internally yell about it because Tony’s still there with his gold eyes and his warm hands.

“I’m gonna reopen these alright? And we’re gonna get the glass out. Do you want something to take the edge off or not?” Tony says calm, but firm.

James wants to tell Tony to forget about it. His body will break down the glass eventually. It’ll hurt. But he’ll manage. He always does.

Somehow, Tony seems to know this, and sighs. “That’s not the point though.” Softly, with barely any pressure at all, Tony traces a fingertip along James’ palm, mindful of the blood, and though James doesn’t flinch, his hand twitches in protest.

“I can feel them, they’re just on the surface,” Tony continues, “it won’t take long.”

James struggles to find the words – to protest, to agree – but Tony waits him out, and eventually, James manages a small assenting nod.

“Alright,” Tony huffs out a breath, tries for a small smile. “Anesthetic?”

“No.”

There’s a beat of hesitation, but Tony covers it up quickly, and turns for the first aid kit laid out beside him on the bathroom floor. His movements are telegraphed, purposeful so that James can follow along as Tony opens an alcohol swab and cleans up the blood, opens another swab and cleans a scalpel edge and a pair of small tongs before setting aside a little dish to collect the glass.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” he asks lightly, in a way that isn’t angling for a particular answer though it’s enough to make James tense. Despite the question, Tony doesn’t wait for a reply, already grasping James’ hand and starting to cut open his palm.

Tony hadn’t been asking because he didn’t believe James, he realizes, Tony had been asking to distract him.

“I don’t like the smell,” James finally says as Tony sets aside the scalpel and uses the tongs to pick out the glass.

“Of the anesthetic?”

“Hm.”

“Not a fan myself,” Tony tells him. “Spent enough time in hospitals.”

For a while, neither of them says anything as Tony methodically makes small incisions and picks out the glass before James’ skin knits itself shut. It’s a slow process.

Through the bathroom door, he can hear Steve talking – continuing his war story, maybe. If nothing else, James is glad he doesn’t have to sit around for it.

He’s been a weapon, an object, for most of his life, being a prop for Steve was not something he thought would be required of him now that he was “free”. Bitterly, James wishes he’d told Steve that. Maybe then, he’d be allowed to have memories of his own.

Which he does.

And Steve’s not here right now to tell him differently.

Tony’s on James’ other hand when James volunteers, “They remind me of the Chair.”

For an instant, Tony freezes.

“Before they’d put me in, they had to do maintenance on the arm, so they’d drug me,” James tells him a little distantly, “It wouldn’t last for long. The smell did, though.”

“No anesthetic then, got it,” Tony notes.

“I don’t remember a lot,” James offers quietly as Tony cleans up the last of the blood off James’ palms, “but I remember that.”

Tony makes an acknowledging noise before, “I’m not surprised. There are studies that claim that recalling memories is easier when there’s a smell associated to it.” James wants to tell him he knows, he’s read up about it, but Tony’s already rising from where he’d been seated at James’ feet, and says, “You still hungry? I’m sure Rhodey left some food for us.”

“For you,” James corrects.

“Yeah, but we all know if I have more than five food groups a day, my body goes into shock,” Tony complains in a way that is both exasperated and fond. “How about it then? You’d be doing me a favor.”

“…alright.”

By the time they make it back to the dining room, everyone’s already left and the table’s been cleared. As predicted, Rhodes has set food aside in the oven with a post-it note declaring “ _you WILL finish your food so help me god.”_

Inside there are two dishes, the other clearly Steve’s doing.

Apparently, Bucky had been a fan of beans. James doesn’t share the sentiment, and neither does Tony.

So, they share Tony’s plate.

The food’s still hot, thanks to the oven set to warm, and it smells like a garden more than it does actual food. It’s a fresh sort of feeling eating it though, and it reminds James of a field somewhere – with yellow flowers and a sweet breeze.

He doesn’t know where the memory comes from, if its from Bucky or from the Soldier or from James himself in the between moments when it wasn’t the other two, but it’s James’ now. His to remember of sitting with Tony at the table, close enough that their knees are flush, and that they have to take turns shoveling food into their mouths or they risk bumping heads.

Up close, Tony’s scent is less gunpowder and more caramel and coffee, warmed by the heat of his skin, and despite himself, James feels comforted by that too.

Tony doesn’t make him talk or fill the void of quiet himself, he just eats and makes soft humming noises in approval.

When the plate is cleared, Tony takes it and their cutlery to the sink to wash, James follows. With elbows and hips bumping, and Tony’s grin curving his lip, James feels comfortable enough to say, “Thank you. For everything.”

With another pointed bump and a wiggle of his brow, Tony says, “You’re welcome,” with a wink which doesn’t make James blush no matter how much Tony laughs.

And James has never been attached to his memories before, but this-this he wants to keep. This moment he wants to remember.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual this was not the story I wanted to write going in, but this is what came out so...I told some of you in the last story that I'd try and write something less sad, and like?? I'm trying but this is as much as I got??? 
> 
> Anyway, the low level panic that is the state of the world 2020 is A Lot. It hasn't been conducive to a lot of things least of all my creativity and motivation, but I hope everyone is doing well and keeping safe. 
> 
> Also side note, this is the 60th story in the series and while I have my suspicions about the amount of salt that's been used to create it, my thanks go to all of you for encouraging it lmao thank you all for reading!
> 
> [As always](https://everything-withered.tumblr.com)


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